Yes / In advanced manufacturing systems, the production of complex and highly customisable products requires the preparation of many different product specifications and associated manufacturing process plans. The creation of these plans involves the search for the production resources (e.g. robots, machine tools, inspection devices) that are needed to implement the product specifications and how to orchestrate them. We present a model-based approach to the automatic generation of manufacturing process plans from the models of the target products and available resources. The modelling language is based on labelled transition systems, which are useful to represent sequences of operations that can be executed in parallel by multiple production resources. Some preliminary experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the presented approach. / This conference paper will be released for public view at the end of the 12-month embargo period established by SpringerNature for their book series.

201 pages / Ensuring algorithms work accurately is crucial, especially when they drive safety critical systems like self-driving cars. We formally model a published distributed algorithm for autonomous vehicles to collaborate and pass thorough an intersection. Models are built and validated using the “Labelled Transition System Analyser” (LTSA). Our models reveal situations leading to deadlocks and crashes in the algorithm. We demonstrate two approaches to gain insight about a large and complex system without modeling the entire system: Modeling a sub system - If the sub system has issues, the super system too. Modeling a fast-forwarded state - Reveals problems that can arise later in a process. Some productivity tools developed for distributed system development are also presented. Manulator, our distributed system simulator, enables quick prototyping and debugging on a single workstation. LTSA-O, extension to LTSA, listens to messages exchanged in an execution of a distributed system and validates it against a model.

A Cyber-physical System (CPS) can be described as a network of interlinked, concurrent computational components that interact with the physical world. Such a system is usually of reactive nature and must satisfy strict timing requirements to guarantee a correct behaviour. The components can be of mixed-criticality which implies different progress models and communication models, depending whether the focus of a component lies on predictability or resource efficiency. In this dissertation I present a novel approach that bridges the gap between stream processing models and Labelled Transition Systems (LTSs). The former offer powerful tools to describe concurrent systems of, usually simple, components while the latter allow to describe complex, reactive, components and their mutual interaction. In order to achieve the bridge between the two domains I introduce the novel LTS Synchronous Interface Automaton (SIA) that allows to model the interaction protocol of a process via its interface and to incrementally compose simple processes into more complex ones while preserving the system properties. Exploiting these properties I introduce an analysis to identify permanent blocking situations in a network of composed processes. SIAs are wrapped by the novel component-based coordination model Process Network with Synchronous Communication (PNSC) that allows to describe a network of concurrent processes where multiple communication models and the co-existence and interaction of heterogeneous processes is supported due to well defined interfaces. The work presented in this dissertation follows a holistic approach which spans from the theory of the underlying model to an instantiation of the model as a novel coordination language, called Streamix. The language uses network operators to compose networks of concurrent processes in a structured and hierarchical way. The work is validated by a prototype implementation of a compiler and a Run-time System (RTS) that allows to compile a Streamix program and execute it on a platform with support for ISO C, POSIX threads, and a Linux operating system.